I know this blog is retired and being revamped, but I thought I’d pull a Jay-z and come out of retirement momentarily after I read about the problem-filled Preview of Julie Taymor’s new Broadway show .

Pretty much to summarize, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark is a new Broadway show by Julie Taymor based on Marvel’s Spider-Man character and loosely based on the continuity of the recent Spider-Man films. Its full of highwire fighting, flashy costumes, and technological sparkle. It’s also light on plot, somehow even the weak story is relatively hard to follow. This is pretty much exactly what to expect from Julie Taymor.

The problem isn’t the article, it’s the comments at the end:

I’m not one to wish anyone ill-will. That being said, however, I am hoping for the failure of this monstrosity. It embodies all that is wrong with Broadway. There are so many good writers and good pieces of work out there, but “Broadway” is only interested in what will sell to the masses. It’s kind of nice to see those big names and their mountains of money get some comeuppance. Besides, if I want to see this kind of nonsense, I’ll go to Vegas and see Cirque.

Certain types of small-minded people tend to adopt this attitude whenever a popular, highly-anticpated movie, album, or TV shows gets previewed.

How does it help anyone for a 65 million dollar show to be bad? Personally, I hope its great (that doesn’t mean it will be), but why hope someone fails? Let’s look at all the great things that would happen if the show were good:

• 1. The people who put their money into making art (commercial art is still art) can at least break even and continue being creative in the future.
• 2. The actors and crew can have a long, successful run working on a good show that makes people happy.
• 3. The show can introduce an audience (young people, male nerds, movie-goers) to the theatre who may have never seen a live theatre production.
• 4. The show can be another thing people can enjoy in a world already filled with mostly unenjoyable things.

Until very recently, theatre has been a populist medium. Many stuffy, “classics” of the stage used to be populist, technology-filed spectacles: Shakespere, yes; Greek tragedies, yes.

It’s also not difficult to find examples of works in all sorts of media that find a way to “appeal to the masses” while still being critically successful.

Maybe it would be okay to wish Julie Taymor failure if she for example, committed a war crime during production, or abused her cast and crew. But she hasn’t displayed one ounce of insincerity (at least publicly). She’s just a controversial director who has a very clear vision of the plotless spectacles she wants to create, and that rubs certain people the wrong way.

Wishing that someone’s work is bad, just so they get “comeuppance” for being successful is pretty tacky.